Questions that must be asked

Why is it that there are seven partly-used tubes of toothpaste in my bathroom drawer?! And how could I have not really noticed? I only did notice by accident: opened the drawer this morning and actually focused, instead of just grabbing.

Seven. Good lord. I have no idea how they all got transported from the linen closet, where unopened tubes await use, to the drawer. Nor why anyone would persist in bringing more and more of them to the drawer. At least only three are tubes of the exact same toothpaste, but good lord - it's not like we have 4 different people in this house who all insist on using a different brand!

And the thing is, left unchecked they would eventually be seven almost empty tubes. The law of averages and random luck dictates that if you reach in the drawer you will not grab the same tube every time, and there is a tendency to reach for the fuller tube, meaning that the amount of toothpaste in each will decrease at relatively the same rate. So, unless I do something about it, it's seven tubes for months and months, and then none as they all run out at pretty much the same time. We had a similar thing going on with mouthwash - two containers of Scope were on the counter, and then one day I noticed that they were both half-empty so poured them both together and discarded one.

But it does not answer the basic question: how could I have gone for weeks not noticing that two containers of Scope were on my bathroom counter? It's not like it's a generous expanse of space - it's only about 2 and a half feet long. For that matter, we only have one small drawer for storing stuff. How did I not notice the toothpaste?

It's amazing, really, how much of our lives we can successfully negotiate on autopilot. I prefer a neat and uncluttered house, but if things are busy the dining room table can get piled up to the point of no available flat space. Then I come out of the crisis mode and focus, and my reactoin is always surprise - how the hell did that happen? Or some object will take up residence on the loveseat and I will walk by it for weeks before it suddenly offends my sensibilities.

We are adaptive. We make the world fit us as much as we have time for, and then we learn to live with the rest of it. Until "the rest of it" slides away from our comfort zone far enough for us to notice.

Me, I'm gonna go sort toothpaste now.

Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

I have always believed in trying to learn new things regularly. And so it was today that I decided to tackle patching the tire on my bike.

I got a flat on Thursday running over glass on my way to work. Asshats will insist on throwing bottles out of car windows, and I apparently did not succeed in swerving around all of it. Had to bring my bike home on the bus Thursday evening. The tire issue has been looming since.

Now, as much riding as I do, it's pitiful how little of my own maintenance I have learned. But I always had a mountain bike before this. The rubber on the tires is thick and sturdy, designed for rough usage. In the ten years I've owned that bike, I've never once had a flat tire.

The road bike, on the other hand, is fast and sleek and has thin, skinny tires. This is my second flat of the summer. And whereas by this time last year I had ridden 1,000 miles for the summer, I only have 400 on the new bike.

Clearly, the flat ratio is WAY up.

The bike has quick release axles on both front and back, but I had never taken a rear tire off before. I learned how to do it when I had to haul the bike into the shop last time I got a flat. The guys at Century Cycles are fabulous - incredibly helpful and generous - and the mechanic took me right back into the repair area so I could watch how it was done. He put my bike up on a stand, and the tire was off in seconds.

"See," he said, "it's pretty simple."

Honestly, though I knew he meant well, it was the kind of "pretty simple" I hear from hairdressers who try in vain to teach me how to do anything with my hair: pretty simple if you've been doing it for years.

"Well," I said, "it's certainly easier with a stand."

He conceded that yes, it was, but he continued to show me how to change out the innertube and reset the tire on the rim.

Thursday, riding home on the bus, I gazed at my bike out the front window and thought about the challenge at hand. Did I attempt this job on my own, or did I reveal myself to be an utter piker and haul the bike back to the shop?

I didn't want to be a piker. But I also didn't have a stand. I added it to my mental Christmas list: one bike stand. Unwilling to wrestle with an unsteady bike, or allow a sensitive derailleur to make contact with the ground, I resigned myself to putting the bike rack on the back of the car and taking the bike to the shop.

The bike rack.

It was a blinding moment of, wow, you're an idiot. All I had to do was put the bike on the rack and it would be off the ground and ready to be worked on! And this is what I did. I was much, much, much slower than the guy at Century Cycles, but I got the tire off, the tube out, the tube patched, and the whole thing put back together. And I have the grime-encrusted fingernails to prove it!

I learned two things today. I learned how to change the tire on my bike. And I learned that patching is not worth the effort. The next time I'm down at Century Cycles, I plan on buying a couple innertubes, and a tire pump I can attach to the bike. Because flat tires are not likely to be a rare occurence with this bike, and I want to be able to ride as much as possible.

It makes me feel good to learn new things. It's a double bonus when they are actually useful things.